The LIVE555TM Media Server

The “LIVE555 Media Server” is a complete RTSP server application.
It can stream several kinds of media file
(which must be stored in the current working directory
– i.e., the directory from which you launch the application – or a subdirectory.):

• A MPEG Transport Stream file (with file name suffix “.ts”)
• A Matroska or WebM file
  (with filename suffix “.mkv” or “.webm”)
• An Ogg file
  (with filename suffix “.ogg”, “ogv”, or “.opus”)
• A MPEG-1 or 2 Program Stream file (with file name suffix “.mpg”)
• A MPEG-4 Video Elementary Stream file (with file name suffix “.m4e”)
• A H.264 Video Elementary Stream file (with file name suffix “.264”)
• A H.265 Video Elementary Stream file (with file name suffix “.265”)
• A VOB video+audio file (with file name suffix “.vob”)
• A DV video file (with file name suffix “.dv”)
• A MPEG-1 or 2 (including layer III – i.e., ‘MP3’) audio file (with file name suffix “.mp3”)
• A WAV (PCM) audio file (with file name suffix “.wav”)
• An AMR audio file (with file name suffix “.amr”)
• An AC-3 audio file (with file name suffix “.ac3”)
• An AAC (ADTS format) audio file (with file name suffix “.aac”)

These streams can be received/played by standards-compliant RTSP/RTP media clients, including:

• VLC media player
• Amino set-top boxes
  (for playing MPEG Transport Streams only)
• The openRTSP command-line RTSP client
  (which receives/stores stream data, without playing it)

Notes:

• The server can transmit multiple streams (from the same, or different files)
  concurrently
• By default, the server transmits its streams as RTP/UDP packets.
  If requested by the RTSP client, the server will stream its RTP (and RTCP)
  packets over TCP.
  (This can be useful for clients that are behind a firewall.)
• Some non-standard RTSP clients – such as Amino set-top boxes – request raw
  UDP streaming, rather than standard RTP streaming.
  Despite this, this server will accommodate such requests, and stream MPEG Transport
  Streams over raw-UDP, if requested.

Downloading the LIVE555 Media Server

Pre-built binaries

Pre-built binary versions of the server are available for some platforms:

If a pre-built binary version is not available for your platform
(or, for whatever reason, does not work on your system), then you must instead
build the application yourself, from source code.

Source code

The application’s source code is distributed as part of the
Open Source “LIVE555 Streaming Media” code,
in the “mediaServer” subdirectory (which must be built last).

Running the LIVE555 Media Server

The server is a console application (there is currently no GUI version).
To run the server, simply type “live555MediaServer”.

‘Trick play’ functionality

The server supports RTSP ‘trick play’ operations for some, but not all,
media types:

Note that in order to provide ‘trick play’ operations for a streamed MPEG Transport Stream file,
a special ‘index file’ must created for each such file,
using our
“MPEG2TransportStreamIndexer”
tool.

Trick play support for additional media types will be added in the future.

Support

All support for this software is via our mailing lists.
(Personal requests for support will not be handled.)
At present, we use just one mailing list:
“[email protected]”.
(Note that you must subscribe to this mailing list before you can post to it.)

Live Networks, Inc. (LIVE555.COM)